The
Northeast Corridor Commission released it Annual Report for 2016 and its Capital Investment Plan for 2018 to 2022 yesterday.
The FY2016 Report can be found
here.
The FY2018 to FY2022 Capital Investment Plan can be found
here.
I have only done a preliminary look through them, so I won't offer commentary on them now...
Harold is one of the biggest projects on the NEC that has funding lined up.
http://web.mta.info/capital/esa_docs/East%20Side%20Access-%20Quarterly%20Report%202016%20Q3.pdf#page=77
The Stimulus gave New York about $300 million to work with. Almost $100 million more comes from the Metropolitan Transit Authority's budget as part of the LIRR's East Side Access. The Harold Interlocking project is to upgrade the Amtrak route so trains coming from Penn Station can exit the tunnel under the East River, pass thru the already congested Sunnyside Yard, and go on to cross the Hellgate Bridge and head to Boston. (And it will get the Amtrak trains out of the way of the LIRR trains that will use the East Side Access to reach Grand Central Terminal.)
When the grant was announced, politicians claimed that the upgrades would save about 3 minutes from the schedules. Need I point out that taking 3 minutes, or even 2 minutes, from the timetables for the Acelas and Regionals to Boston, as well as the Regionals to Springfield and even the Vermonter, should be huge. But it won't be soon.
That Quarterly report indicates that the East Side Access project's current goal, after innumerable delays, is a Public Revenue Service date of December 2022, with a hope that if things go well, revenue service could begin in 2021.
The report does not break out a separate revenue service date for Amtrak's portion of the combined Harold Interlocking/East Side Access project. There could be an earlier date for Amtrak's part alone, but I didn't find it reading late last night.
So are we looking at a Stimulus-funded project to be completed 4 or 5 years after the September 30, 2017, deadline for such spending?